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Friday, September 15, 2017

SBI Life Insurance Company Limited ("Company"
or "Issuer") proposes to open on Wednesday, September 20,
2017, an initial public offering up to 120,000,000 Equity Shares of face value
of ₹ 10 each (“Equity Shares”) which comprises of an offer for
sale of up to 80,000,000 Equity Shares by State Bank of India (“State Bank”
or the “Promoter Selling Shareholder”) and up to 40,000,000 Equity
Shares by BNP Paribas Cardif S.A. (the “Investor Selling Shareholder”
and together with the Promoter Selling Shareholder, the “Selling
Shareholders”) (“Offer”), including a reservation of up to 2,000,000
Equity Shares for purchase by Eligible Employees (as defined in “Definitions
and Abbreviations” at page 5 of the red herring prospectus dated September 11,
2017 registered by the Company with the Registrar of Companies, Maharashtra at
Mumbai (“RHP”) on September 12, 2017) at a discount of Rs. 68 per Equity
Share and a reservation of up to 12,000,000 Equity Shares for purchase by State
Bank Shareholders (as defined in “Definitions and Abbreviations” at page 7 of
the RHP). The Offer would constitute up to 12% of post-Offer paid-up Equity
Share capital and the net offer shall constitute 10.60% of the post-Offer
paid-up Equity Share capital.

The Price Band for the Offer is fixed from Rs. 685 per Equity
Share to Rs. 700 per Equity Share, with a discount to Eligible Employees of Rs.
68 per Equity Share on the Offer Price. Bids can be made for a minimum of 21
Equity Shares and in multiples of 21 Equity Shares thereafter. The Offer will
close on Friday, September 22, 2017.

The Company and the Promoter Selling Shareholders may, in
consultation with the book running lead managers to the Offer ("Lead
Managers"), consider participation by Anchor Investors. Such Anchor
Investors shall Bid during the Anchor Investor Bid / Offer Period; i.e., one
Working Day prior to the Bid/Offer Opening Date, on which Bids by Anchor
Investors shall be submitted and allocation to Anchor Investors shall be
completed.

The Equity Shares offered in the Offer proposed to be
listed on BSE Limited and National Stock Exchange of India Limited.

The Offer is being made in accordance with Regulation 26(1) of
the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Issue of Capital and Disclosure
Requirements) Regulations, 2009, as amended (“SEBI Regulations”),
wherein not more than 50% of the Net Offer shall be allocated on a
proportionate basis to Qualified Institutional Buyers (“QIBs”), provided
that our Company and the Promoter Selling Shareholders may, in consultation
with the Lead Managers, allocate up to 60% of the QIB Portion to Anchor
Investors on a discretionary basis, out of which one-third shall be reserved
for domestic Mutual Funds only, subject to valid Bids being received from
domestic Mutual Funds at or above the Anchor Investor Allocation Price, in
accordance with the SEBI Regulations. 5% of the QIB Portion (excluding the
Anchor Investor Portion) shall be available for allocation on a proportionate
basis to Mutual Funds only, and the remainder of the QIB Portion shall be
available for allocation on a proportionate basis to all

QIB Bidders (other than Anchor Investors), including Mutual
Funds, subject to valid Bids being received at or above the Offer Price.

Further, not less than 15% of the Net Offer shall be available
for allocation on a proportionate basis to Non-Institutional Investors and not
less than 35% of the Net Offer shall be available for allocation to Retail
Individual Bidders in accordance with the SEBI Regulations, subject to valid
Bids being received at or above the Offer Price. All potential investors, other
than Anchor Investors, are required to mandatorily utilise the Application
Supported by Blocked Amount (“ASBA”) process providing details of their
respective bank account which will be blocked by the SCSBs, to participate in
this Offer.

The IoT India Congress
2017 concluded its 2 days session today with an enthralling series of panel
discussions, key note addresses, Healthcare Live exhibition session along with
an addition of the uniquely designed Argonaut session. Deva P Seetharam,
Founder, DataGlen, Mrinmoy Purkayastha, VP & Head, ALTEN
Calsoft Labs and Bahubali Shete, Founder & CEO, IOT Pot India
Private Limited were recognised for their excellence and leadership in IoT
space. The start-ups Flutura
Business Solutions Pvt. Ltd., Swajal
Water Pvt. Ltd., TrakItNow
Technologies Pvt Ltd were awarded for
their exemplary work in the IoT domain.

As part of this year’s
initiative, the IoT India Congress introduced the Argonaut session that
provided a platform for startups to interface with angel investors. Twelve of
India’s leading angel investors including Ajeet Khurana & VC Karthic
committed Rs. 14.4 million of investment to Intelitaap and Swajal.

Elated about the
session, Apurva Damani, Director, Artha India Ventures said, “The platform
was very useful for the young and blooming entrepreneurs who are in need of
grooming, mentoring and validation of their ideas. It is heartening for me to
see the B2B space taking off”.

The two day conference
was inaugurated by Aruna Sundararajan, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and
Information Technology, Government of India, and had keynote sessions by N
Sivasailam, Additonal Secretary, Department of Telecommunication, Government of
India among others. It witnessed engaging participation from over 320
delegates, IoT enthusiast and thought leaders across industries.

As part of her keynote
address, Aruna highlighted the work done by the government to incentivise new
investment in related sectors, which will be unveiled in the New Telecom Policy
in 2018. She spoke about IoT generating 10-15 million jobs in India through
adoption of IoT in the next few years and expressed government’s activeness on
the issue of 5G.

N Sivasailam talked
about the opportunities for gram panchayat outreach and pressed on the need to
increase the number of Indian satellites to satisfy increasing demands. He
said, India will cover 100,000 gram panchayats with broadband by later this
year.

The Congress witnessed
launch of three whitepapers during the course of two days around adoption and
growth of IoT in various sectors.

Speaking on the side
lines of the Congress, Dr. Rishi Bhatnagar, Chairman of the IET
India IoT Panel said, “The environment this year was brimming with
excitement and the 2nd edition of the IoT India Congress was a great
success witnessing more participation as compared to last year. With the palpable
drive of the thought leaders and the insight in the innovative business models
of the start-ups, it is evident that India is in the right path. We are
happy that the IoT India Congress is working to influence the future of IoT and is a platform to create future
engagement and progress in an IoT enabled India.”

“The internet of
things is going to change the way we interact and do business. It is
great to see the progress in the IoT space and we believe that such efforts,
initiatives and talent is being acknowledged and encouraged. With more
start-ups foraying into the IoT space, it is an opportunity to identify young
companies and thought leaders with breakthrough innovation in IoT that are
progressing the IoT movement in India.” said Shekhar Sanyal, Director and Country Head
of the IET.

Continuing with its efforts to provide
innovative offerings, Nestlé India is delighted to introduce the country’s
favourite MILKYBAR, with increased milk and less sugar. Delivering on the
journey of improving nutritional profile of our product, Milk is 1st in
the new recipe. The percentage of milk in the new MILKYBAR has been increased
by close to 8% and reduce sugar by about 10%.

Speaking on the launch, Nikhil Chand, General Manager,
Chocolate & Confectionery, Nestlé India, said,“In our journey to
improve the nutrition profile of our products, we are adding more milk and
reducing sugar in MILKYBAR. Raising consumer awareness and with the intent of
being more transparent, we have mentioned GDA on front of the pack. We have
also made concerted efforts to promote portion guidance and all our chocolate
& confectionery innovations have lighter treats as part of the portfolio
several of which are less than 50 calories per serve.” Chandadded “In line
with this, we have used our strength in research and development as well as
consumer understanding to develop a tastier recipe for MILKYBAR that is also
lower in sugar. MILKYBAR has been amongst the most loved products in our
chocolate & confectionery portfolio and is a clear leader in its category.”

The new packaging highlights the message
that ‘Milk is 1st in the recipe’ while
indicating the improved taste. The healthier and tastier MILKYBAR will be available at all
leading grocery stores across the country at Rs 5, Rs 10 and Rs 20.

CLOUDSEC, the leading internet security conference in Asia Pacific
and Europe, today held its seventh annual event in
Mumbai. Hosted by Trend Micro Incorporated, CLOUDSEC 2017 gathered more than 700 industry
experts from across the globe to meet renowned industry thought-leaders who
shared their insights to the business community. Over 20 eminent speakers
provided next-generation solutions, and instructed the organizations to ‘Level-Up’
their fight against cybercriminals.

"Security can no
longer be considered as an after-thought in the larger scheme of things, rather
it should be a well-thought out investment by enterprises, looking to catapult
themselves in a competitive and technology-driven environment. Companies need
to adopt stringent measures to stay ahead of cyber criminals," said
Dhanya Thakkar, Managing Director and Vice President, APAC, Trend Micro.

He further added,
“CLOUDSEC is the best platform for attendees to build their threat intelligence
and improvise their knowledge through the track sessions, panel discussion and
other activities. It gives them the opportunity to know and be aware of the
latest security strategies and the ways to protect against the attackers.”

Present at the event, Nilesh Jain, Country Manager (India
and SAARC), Trend Micro said, “Targeted attacks, Ransomware and
Business Email Compromise (BEC) are some of the newer and stealthier security
challenges faced by enterprises of today. As the cloud and the Internet of
Things (IoT) ecosystem become more interconnected, it is essential for
organizations to reevaluate and redefine their understanding of threats, risks,
and solutions in an ever-changing landscape.”

During the event, Bill McGee, Senior Vice President of Hybrid Cloud
Security, Trend Micro, offered insights on the latest and upcoming trends in
cloud computing, which may challenge current information security mindset and
practices. Simon Piff, Vice President of Security Practice, IDC, explained the
future of IT security technologies and focused on the structural changes
organizations need to make to ensure that the depth of innovation can be best
leveraged to create a holistic and robust enterprise security strategy and
Sunil Varkey, Vice President and CISO, Wipro Technologies, elaborated on trust
and assurance, in the digital world.

Also present at the event was, Christophe Durand, Police Senior
Superintendent, Interpol Global Complex for innovation (IGCI) who explained how
an enhanced attribution process could help in mitigating the cyber risk. Vishal
Salvi, Chief Information Security Officer, Infosys, shared his perspective on
Ransomware and how companies need to treat data protection proactively, getting
the right solutions and processes in place to prepare for the inevitable
attack.

The event concluded with a closing keynote on evolving era of
cloud by Nilesh Jain, Country Manager (India and SAARC), Trend Micro; Mohit
Pande, Country Manager – India, Google Cloud and Arun Kumar Parameswaran,
Managing Director, VMware India, who were the panelists.

Thursday, September 14, 2017

ITC Infotech, a global
scale full service provider of technology solutions and a fully owned
subsidiary of ITC Ltd, and Chirp, the global leader in ‘data over sound’
technology today announced a strategic partnership which will enable the
companies to collaboratively develop solutions for clients across the
globe.

“At ITC Infotech, we are committed to leveraging technology
innovations for our clients. Chirp’s ‘data over sound’ solution lends
itself efficiently to industries we work with. This partnership
brings in unique synergies, giving us at ITC Infotech an opportunity to offer a
significant technology- advantage to our clients. With Chirp, we are
looking forward to accelerated development of client-specific,
industry-specific solutions,” said Sushma Rajagopalan, MD & CEO, ITC
Infotech.

Transferring data over sound takes advantage of speaker and microphone-equipped
devices of any kind, by using these devices as audio encoders and
decoders. Any device embedded
with the ‘data over sound’ technology can ‘hear’ and ‘share’ the data. The key
advantage of this technology is the ability to broadcast small amounts of
digital data to multiple devices without the need for pairing the devices or
knowing the device ID of receiving devices. The technology also works
without the necessity of any other form of connectivity, such as Wi-Fi or
Bluetooth, allowing ‘networking’ of multiple platforms and devices to be done
offline in some cases.

Chirp has developed fully interoperable software development
kits (SDKs) of their technology on a wide range of platforms (such as iOS,
Android, JavaScript, Python and Linux, as well as numerous chipsets such as the
full range of ARM Cortex MCUs) with which ITC Infotech will be building further
solutions. These solutions will be specifically developed for clients in
industries including Banking Financial Services & Insurance (BFSI),
Consumer Packaged Goods, Manufacturing & Automotive, Retail, Airlines and
Hospitality. Chirp’s technology has already been deployed globally on
mass-scale, with hundreds of millions of devices currently connecting and
transmitting data with this technology.

Commenting on the partnership, Moran Lerner, Chief Executive
Officer, Chirp, said, “At Chirp, we believe sound and data should be used
together to share things. With our partnership with ITC Infotech, we are now
looking forward to bringing the Internet of Sound to clients globally at a more
rapid scale. The time and resources that ITC Infotech will be investing to
integrate Chirp into their suite of services, and those of their clients’,
means we now have the scale to deliver Chirp’s unique capabilities to the
leading businesses across multiple sectors and ultimately those businesses’
global consumers. We’re excited to see the first of many imminent deployments
of Chirp’s technology through ITC Infotech.”

As part of the partnership, ITC Infotech will be building a team
of specialist engineers and technical consultants to enable global sales,
service and implementation of Chirp technologies. Chirp will provide further
support in joint training, capability building and solution development to
fast-track creation of industry specific proof-of-concepts (POCs) and
real-world mass-scale projects. ITC Infotech is currently engaged with over 200
world leading businesses globally, with operations spanning North America,
Europe, Middle East & Africa, India and Asia Pac.

Infosys Foundation, the philanthropic arm
of Infosys, has signed a Memorandum of
Understanding (MoU) with Visakha Jilla Nava Nirman Samithi (VJNNS) to construct
100 gravity fed water supply systems in tribal villages of Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. The endowment of Rs 5.92 crore will be used to promote
good sanitation practices and create efficient water management systems in all
target villages.

VJNNS
an NGO in Andhra Pradesh, aims at making potable drinking water available to
remote tribal villages in the districts of Visakhapatnam and Srikakulam.
Through this partnership, Infosys Foundation intends to provide an impetus to
VJNNS’s objective of constructing a gravity fed water supply system that will
help 100 tribal villages and 40,000 beneficiaries using pipelines. This will
not only help enhance health but also aid in reducing water-borne diseases.

Speaking
about the MoU, Sudha Murty, Chairperson of Infosys Foundation, said, “Drinking
water supply and sanitation in India continue to be a key concern. The
Foundation endeavors to promote good sanitation practices and aims to train
local communities to effectively manage water supply systems through workshops.
Under this project, local communities will also be taught to manage a village
development fund.”

BookMyShow today announced that it has become the first Indian
online ticketing brand to participate in the WhatsApp business pilot. As part
of this test, BookMyShow has made WhatsApp a default ticket confirmation
channel for all its users.

This means that users who book tickets on BookMyShow will now
receive a message on WhatsApp with the confirmation text or an M-ticket (mobile
ticket) QR Code, along with an email.

Ravdeep Chawla, Head of Product, BookMyShow said, “At BookMyShow, we are constantly
taking measures to enhance our users’ experience on our platforms. Keeping up
with their changing preferences and habits, we decided to integrate BookMyShow
with WhatsApp for its pilot. WhatsApp has definitely become a preferred mode of
communication for millions of people in our country and we could identify
tremendous value in making it a default ticket confirmation channel. We have
already started rolling out this feature and over the course of next few weeks,
we aim to scale it to cover our entire user base.”

BookMyShow had recently introduced ‘Plan-it’, the in-app
messaging feature for friends and families to interact with each other in real
time, suggesting movies, show times, venue options and eventually complete the
movie tickets booking from within the chat window.

Lenovo India’s latest edition of its bestselling K Note series, the K8
Note, will go on open sale beginning Friday, 15th
September, 2017 on Amazon.in. The K8 Note has received tremendous
response from the market and was sold out within 8 minutes of
going on sale on Amazon.in last month. The company is now opening the
availability of the device for discerning consumers who want a holistic
experience from their smartphone.

Targeted at the young and spirited who want more from their device at a
pocket-friendly price, the Lenovo K8 Note made history as the first device in
Lenovo’s K Note series to run on stock Android and offer dual cameras. Designed
with a metal body, it is available in two colors: Venom Black and Fine Gold.
The K8 Note is also powered by a 10-core processor, backed by 4GB RAM, 64GB
storage (and a dedicated memory card slot), Dolby(R) Atmos(R) sound, as well as
a large 4000 mAh battery with a 15W Turbo ChargerTM.

As a special open sale days offer, customers can exchange their old devices
for the new Lenovo K8 Note and receive additional Rs 1000 off for their old
smartphone. In addition, consumers using a HSBC credit or debit card will also
receive a cashback of Rs 1000.

The most outstanding hardware feature of the Lenovo K8 Note - also known as
the “Killer Note” for its great photography features - is its dual camera
set-up, which is comprised of a 13.0-megapixel primary and 5.0-megapixel
secondary depth sensor. The dual cameras work seamlessly together, allowing
users to take photographs with amazing depth of field (up to virtual
DSLR-equivalent F/1.2), making it one of the best cameras in its class. Samples
of images taken by a select group of photographers using the K8 Note can be
seen at @KillerShots. And for those who love snapping themselves,
there is a 13.0-megapixel selfie camera with a full light LED flash.
Additionally, Lenovo K8 Note’s multimedia experience is amazing superior with
TheatreMax.

You can view all the content you want with a much larger virtual
screen once you put on a VR headset. Dolby Atmos ensures that you get high
quality sound from your device - whether it is the thump of a drum or the
buzzing of a bee in a forest. The phone even has a dedicated music key to play,
pause, or switch tracks. It also comes with an advanced water repellent coating
that protects it from spills, splashed or getting caught in the rain!

Pricing and availability

The Lenovo K8 Note is priced at Rs 12,999/-
for 3GB+32GB variant and Rs 13999/- for 4GB+64GB variant and will now be
available via open sale, exclusively on Amazon.in.

Mahindra Electric, a pioneer in the development and manufacture of
electric vehicles (EV) and a part of India’s US$19 billion Mahindra Group,
today announced the completion of 50 million electric kilometers on Indian
roads.

Together, the e2o and e2oPlus electric cars have contributed to a
saving of 2,50,000 kgs of carbon dioxide emission into the environment which is
the equivalent of planting 25,000new trees. This
milestone marks the beginning of a greener future for India and announces the
arrival of an Electric Mobility revolution.

Commenting on this milestone, Mahesh Babu, CEO Mahindra
Electric “Crossing the 50 million electric kilometers milestone comes
at a time when the Government has significantly increased its thrust on electric
vehicles and accelerated the process of large scale adoption of electric
vehicles through its Electric Mobility Mission 2030. This is a proud
moment for us and reaffirms our role in India’s electric mobility revolution.”

Babu, further said, “To put this
50 million electric kilometers into perspective, imagine the e2o and e2oPlus
doing a trip from Earth to Mars. We would like to thank our customers, the EV
pioneers of India, for their support that has enabled us to reach the country’s
first EV milestone and helped us to set out on the next phase of this exciting
journey.”

India’s leading electric car, the e2oPlus has smart technology and
telematics integrated into it. These features allow the vehicle to remain
connected with the customer as well as Mahindra Electric. Telematics help
Mahindra Electric engineers to remotely diagnose and fix any issues that may
come up in the vehicle. It also helps collect big data to help fine tune and
improve the technology that is at the core of these vehicles.

The second
edition of India’s largest conclave on IoT, the IoT India Congress 2017
kick-started its two day event today at the Park Plaza Hotel, Bangalore. IoT
India Congress 2017 is the platform of platforms for empowering business
outcomes using the Internet of Things. Aruna Sundararajan, Secretary, Ministry
of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India inaugurated
the event, which was followed by the formal launchof the
Healthcare Live Experience Zone.The two-day
session will focus on eight tracks - Healthcare, Manufacturing, Smart Living,
Emerging Technologies, Ganga Rejuvenation, Telecom, Standards and Digital
Payments & Financial Inclusion along with workshops on topics ranging from
inter-device communication using blockchain to Raspberry Pi for IoT
applications and essentials of drone flying. More than 80 speakers from various
leading companies like GE, Philips, Tata Group, IBM, AT&T Global Network
Services, Accenture, Microsoft, Fortis Hospital, Ola, Vodafone, Bharti Airtel,
Zoomcar, Hitachi, Bosch etc. will participate in this event and discuss how IoT
is changing the landscape of the industry. The congress
is observed to be the only platform that can readily impact businesses /
revenues not only for the entire ecosystem of technology business beginning
from chip manufacturers, gateway providers, telecom operators, system
integrators, IoT platform and solution providers, but also those segments /
user communities who might not yet look at IoT as a business game changer for
them.Few of the
key highlights of the congress will be the Healthcare Live, SME Meets etc.,
that will bring together an end-to-end ecosystem of the Internet of Things – to
work with each other and speed the IoT movement in India. The platform will
achieve this through CEO meets, product and solutions discovery for SMEs,
funding opportunities and mentorship for startups and academic projects, idea
discovery avenues for VCs and incubators, and policy inputs for government
agencies.Few of the
eminent speakers at the event are:

The Congress will also host the
prestigious IoT Thought Leadership Award 2017, where Sri Sri Ravi
Shankar, the Founder of Art of Living will be the Special Guest.
The IoT Start-Up Awards 2017 will recognise exemplary work done by
start-ups in the IoT space.

Speaking on the sidelines of the event,
Dr. Rishi Bhatnagar, Chairman of the IET India IoT Panel and President, Aeris
Communications said, "The IoT
India Congress started with a vision to provide people a platform beyond the
borders of organizations to come together and create the roadmap for IoT
adoption. IoT is a disruptive technology that is connecting and encompassing
multiple sectors and we at IET IoT Panel understand the need to connect the
industry leaders to further the growth and adoption of IoT technology. We
are happy to see the overwhelming participation of IoT enthusiasts at the
second edition of the IoT India Congress. We look forward to the enriching
sessions tomorrow."

“This
edition of the IoT India Congress is showcasing the outstanding application of
IoT deployment in various sectors in India. The internet of things is a
platform business and instead of working in silos, it requires businesses to
come together and integrate ideas and technologies to create the future.
With this congress, we aim to break barriers, provide a platform to various players
to come together and take back the learning that can further the growth of IoT
adoption in India. This time we have multiple tracks and with the inclusion of
Argonaut and Healthcare Live sessions, the excitement from participants is
endearing. With more sectors and areas being IoT enabled, it is great to see
the entire tech community come together on one platform to further the IoT
revolution. ”said
Shekhar Sanyal, Director and Country Head of the IET.

CLOUDSEC, the leading internet security
conference in Asia Pacific and Europe, today held its seventh
annual event in Mumbai today.
Hosted by Trend Micro Incorporated,CLOUDSEC 2017 gathered more than 700 industry experts from
across the globe to meet renowned industry thought-leaders who shared their
insights to the business community. Over 20 eminent speakers provided
next-generation solutions, and instructed the organizations to ‘Level-Up’ their fight against cybercriminals.

"Security can no
longer be considered as an after-thought in the larger scheme of things, rather
it should be a well-thought out investment by enterprises, looking to catapult
themselves in a competitive and technology-driven environment. Companies need
to adopt stringent measures to stay ahead of cyber criminals," said Dhanya Thakkar, Managing Director and Vice
President, APAC, Trend Micro.

He further added, “CLOUDSEC
is the best platform for attendees to build their threat intelligence and
improvise their knowledge through the track sessions, panel discussion and
other activities. It gives them the opportunity to know and be aware of the
latest security strategies and the ways to protect against the attackers.”

Present
at the event, Nilesh Jain, Country
Manager (India and SAARC), Trend Micro said, “Targeted attacks, Ransomware
and Business Email Compromise (BEC) are some of the newer and stealthier
security challenges faced by enterprises of today. As the cloud and the Internet of Things
(IoT) ecosystem become more interconnected, it is essential for organizations
to reevaluate and redefine their understanding of threats, risks, and solutions
in an ever-changing landscape.”

During the
event, Bill McGee, Senior Vice President of Hybrid Cloud Security, Trend Micro,
offered insights on the latest and upcoming trends in cloud computing, which
may challenge current information security mindset and practices. Simon Piff,
Vice President of Security Practice, IDC, explained the future of IT security
technologies and focused on the structural changes organizations need to make
to ensure that the depth of innovation can be best leveraged to create a
holistic and robust enterprise security strategy and Sunil Varkey, Vice
President and CISO, Wipro Technologies, elaborated on trust and assurance, in
the digital world.

Also present at
the event was, Christophe Durand, Police Senior Superintendent, Interpol Global
Complex for innovation (IGCI) who explained how an enhanced attribution process
could help in mitigating the cyber risk. Vishal Salvi, Chief Information
Security Officer, Infosys, shared his perspective on Ransomware and how companies
need to treat data protection proactively, getting the right solutions and
processes in place to prepare for the inevitable attack.

The event
concluded with a closing keynote on evolving era of cloud by Nilesh Jain,
Country Manager (India and SAARC), Trend Micro; Mohit Pande, Country Manager –
India, Google Cloud and Arun Kumar Parameswaran, Managing Director, VMware
India, who were the panelists.

Sightsavers, a leading global development organization working
in over 30 countries to combat avoidable blindness and promote equal
opportunities for visually impaired, unveiled “Eyes OK Please”, a
report on National Truckers Programme, named RAAHI – Road Safety and
Assurance By Healthy Eyes, in the presence of its honorary brand ambassador
and internationally acclaimed actor, Shri Kabir Bedi. The programme will reach
out to 500,000 truck drivers and helpers of the laborious 9 million truck
drivers and transporters community present in India. This 9 million-truck
driver community transports 65% of national cargo by road.

With an aim to understand the situation of refractive errors and
spectacle usage among truckers and transporters who were part of Sightsavers’
interventions, the study spanned across 3 years analyzed vision for thousands
of truckers, including a 360-degree testing of all normal visual faculties.
Drawing from the research-backed insight that good vision accounts for as much
as 95% of all sensory requirements to drive safely, the National Truckers
Programme detects visual problems, provides spectacles or other service/
referrals. This intervention is an attempt to pre-empt visual problems among
drivers, since road travel accidents have an annual death toll of 1.2 million
worldwide and up to 50 million injuries. The findings corroborate an earlier study
by road safety experts CSRI-CRRI and IDTR that states that drivers operating
trucks have undetected eye problems and live and drive for long periods of time
with these problems.The intervention for truckers is as necessary
as it is missing, in the country’s road safety discourse.

The data in this report comes from 235 outreach camps that
Sightsavers India and its partners conducted over 10 cities in India. From
April to December 2016, these eye camps screened 17,546 people. A total of 324
respondents – 268 drivers and 56 staff (including Conductors and Helpers) –
from 10 cities were interviewed for this study. The average age of the drivers
interviewed was found to be 44.6 years. Among the 268 drivers, 81% were truck
drivers, 11.6% were bus drivers, and 7.5% drove other vehicles such as autos,
private vehicles or tempos.

The findings of the report states that a very high number of
respondents knew that there is a problem. Nearly half, i.e., 48.5% of the
respondents said they felt the need to attend the eye camp because of an
eye-related problem. Of these, as many as 42.2% said they faced a problem in
driving or working. It also states that the respondents have been living and
driving with eye problems for as long as 8+ months, with 64.2% of the respondents
saying that they were not doing anything about their eye problems. Of the 324
respondents, each one required professional eye care; with 96.6% required
spectacles and 3.4% were referred for further treatment.

Unveiling the report, Dr. S.Y. Quraishi, former chief
election commissioner (CEC) of India and Honorary Chair of Sightsavers in India said,
“I feel proud to be part of this great organization that is undertaking such
important studies for the betterment of the country and the citizens. The Eyes
OK Please! report on National Truckers Programme brings out that eye
conditions such as refractive errors are quite common among truckers and
transporters. The effort by Sightsavers in this direction is commendable. The
mission that was started more than five decades ago is forging ahead to bring
sight to many and lighten up their lives with hope. I pay my respect to Sir
John Wilson whose vision had set a course to change the eye health scenario of
not only India but globally.”

RN Mohanty, CEO Sightsavers (India) said at the event, “We envisage a world
where no one is blind from avoidable causes and where visually impaired people
participate equally in society. From this experience, Sightsavers India can
confidently state that community-based eye testing, provision of spectacles and
referral services for the trucking community have a huge potential for scaling
up in India. Sightsavers India will relentlessly work for the betterment of its
people and also contribute significantly to Sustainable Development Goal number
three (SDGs), especially 3.6 which says that by 2020, 50 percent of the deaths
from road accidents will be reduced.”

Declaring the programme open, Kabir Bedi, honorary brand
ambassador, Sightsavers India and internationally acclaimed actor said,
“Not many in the past have paid heed to such a significant need of having an
eye health programme for our truck driver community. It is clearly a welcome
intervention by Sightsavers to enhance road safety in India by reaching out to this laborious truck driving
community.”

SonicWall,
the trusted security partner protecting more than one million networks
worldwide, and SentinelOne, the company transforming endpoint protection, today
announced a new agreement to bring together SentinelOne’s next-generation
endpoint protection with SonicWall’s next-generation firewall (NGFW) solution.
By combining the two powerful offerings, SonicWall and SentinelOne will not
only automate the distribution and enforcement of SentinelOne’s Endpoint
Protection Platform (EPP), but also ensure automatic remediation of malicious
attacks such as ransomware in the event of infection by reversing system and
file modifications.

“The
outbreak of global high-profile attacks such as WannaCry and NotPetya have
established that once ransomware penetrates a network, the damage can spread in
a matter of minutes,” said Vikram Phatak, Chief Executive Officer of NSS
Labs. “This
combined solution has demonstrated that it will detect existing and new threats
and automatically respond quickly, all while allowing users to simplify ongoing
enforcement of endpoint protection.”

By
combining the two solutions, SonicWall and SentinelOne will allow
administrators to not only create policies to determine which individuals must
run the endpoint solution on their devices, but also add controls to ensure
that devices are running the endpoint client, if required. Through the
partnership, SentinelOne and SonicWall will also offer threat intelligence
sharing – combining the industry’s fastest conversion from unknown to known
malware via the SonicWall Capture Threat Network with the addition of threat
intelligence from SentinelOne endpoint data. Additionally, the combined
solution brings key features including:

·Policy-based enforcement, compliance, quarantine and remediation

·Cloud-based centralized management and analytics

·Dynamic detection with behavioral models and machine learning

·Automatic remediation of ransomware and other advanced threats

“Combining our
offerings eliminates the need for
organizations to purchase separate endpoint solutions and employ specialists to
install and maintain endpoint protection. We’re proud to partner with
SonicWall to amplify our SMB market coverage, jointly delivering what we
believe is the most effective, holistic, and consumable next-generation
endpoint protection solution available.” said Tomer Weingarten, Chief Executive
Officer of SentinelOne. “Together, we are removing complexity for users and
addressing the reality of our users’ business environments while still
continuing to stop the most advanced as well as never seen before cyber
threats.”

SentinelOne was listed
as ‘most visionary’ in the 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant, received a
“recommended” rating for Advanced Endpoint Protection from NSS Labs, and is
consistently rated the top EPP product by leading AV testing
organizations. For five straight years,
SonicWall has excelled in NSS’s Next Generation Firewall testing, the industry's
most comprehensive, real-world testing of NGFWs.

“Today’s
partnership agreement with SentinelOne marks the beginning of another important
chapter in SonicWall’s story, as we offer our customers a new, enhanced level
of protection,” said Bill Conner, President and CEO of SonicWall. “Our two
powerful solutions bring enterprise-level security enforcement, as well as
automated detection, prevention, remediation and compliance, to small and
medium sized organizations around the world. The combined offering takes
automated real-time breach detection and prevention to the next level, enabling
our customers to focus on their core businesses and fear less.”

The
combined offering from SonicWall and SentinelOne provides protection to users
operating Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and VDI. It will be available for purchase
in early 2018.

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Vistara, India’s finest full service carrier, has launched
‘Vistara Hackathon’, the country’s largest of its kind in aviation. The
‘Vistara Hackathon’ is aimed at encouraging the young minds and draw
participation from across the country to create innovative solutions that will
disrupt the industry in line with the airline’s vision of transforming the
flying experience for travellers in India. The all-India ‘Vistara Hackathon’
will be held in Delhi/NCR and Bengaluru from October 7, 2017 to October 8,
2017, the registration for which is open until September 25, 2017.

Organised in partnership with IncubateIND, the ‘Vistara Hackathon’
will involve 20 teams from each city that will compete with each other to
create new applications and tools to address aviation-related challenges in
areas such as, tracking traveller behaviour, personalisation of air travel,
intelligent crowd monitoring at airports, system integration with third-party
APIs and software, inflight entertainment and intelligent customer targeting, amongst
other challenging aspects. The solutions submitted at the ‘Vistara
Hackathon’ will be reviewed by a panel of technology and aviation
experts who will hand-pick winners, based on originality, potential for
scalability and successful execution.

Phee Teik Yeoh, CEO, Vistara, said, “At Vistara, innovation is at the forefront of
everything we do, from design to delivery of our products and service, and in
so doing, delighting our customers. Information Technology is our backbone,
which helps us stay ahead of the curve and do the right things at the right
time and in the most effective way. The ‘Vistara Hackathon’ is a reflection of
our innovative approach to leverage on technology in our effort to change the
way people travel in India, and therefore, bring them the ‘new feeling of
flying’ with Vistara.”

Elaborating the airline’s focus on technology, Ravinder
Pal Singh, Chief Information & Innovation Officer,
Vistara, said, “Vistara is the first Indian airline to have built an
end-to-end IT infrastructure on Cloud. We’re adopting the latest technologies
to drive innovation across avenues – from maximising convenience for travellers
across customer touchpoints to simplifying internal processes that lead to
increased productivity and cost-saving. Technology will help bring about
disruptive changes in the aviation industry, some of which we hope to discover
at the ‘Vistara Hackathon’.”

Vistara continues to invest in cutting-edge business software,
mobility, Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, big-data impacting and
improving people & quality of its workplace – all with the purpose of
delivering an unmatched experience across all touchpoints as well as to optimize
processes and operations. In a
short span of less than three years, Vistara has developed a robust
technological framework to support its growth and to ensure a seamless
experience for millions of travellers.